Having previously attended 3 sets of evening classes in Genealogy at the University of Strathclyde (which I highly recommend for dipping your toe into family history), I had initially been tempted to continue onto their own Postgraduate course. However, having had a class visit from the course administrator and having read Kirsty Wilkinson’s experiences, I decided I couldn’t commit to the required 20 hours a week study time.

The Dundee course is much more flexible, allowing the study of individual modules one at a time and building slowly to the Certificate/Diploma/Masters accreditation over a longer period of time. This fits much better when having to study as well as being in full-time employment. This was also the schedule I followed when studying for my BSc in Information Technology at University of the West of Scotland a few years ago: one 3 hour session per week in Paisley after work was about all I could handle! And with the Dundee course being distance-learning, there will be no need for such long, long days this time.

Another minor selling point was that if I pursue the course until Masters level, the award is an MLitt rather than MSc. Being a Master of Letters in addition to a Bachelor of Science just sounds so much better and I get to have two sets of letters after my name LOL!